Time Machine asks about my drive after every backup

[cookieme]

Originally Posted by dnanian

That prompt should only come up one time, when the drive is erased, and not again. As far as I know, Time Machine keeps track of the low-level UUID of the drive.

Are you sure that you're Smart Updating the drive and not erasing it?

Yep 100% sure that I'm using Smart Update. I've even removed the TM preferences file found under /Library/Preferences and that doesn't help.

I've googled and tried to find out what's happening, but as far as I can tell it has to do with the hidden file on the external drive being deleted after every SD Smart Update.